How to approach your boss about including you in more design decisions if you're not a designer?

Question

I have a weird dilemma. I am a front end developer at a company and am getting handed designs that are simply not web friendly. Our UX/UI is handled by a singular other person and I am often not in the loop for UI creation. By the time the designs reach my desk they've been approved by both my boss and the client, therefore I really have to have an outstanding reason to present a change to them.

From what I've read online this isn't a new problem.

A few times now an entire page has been very good for print design, but can't hold up under web design. The best way I can explain it is there are a lot of overlapping boxes and tight margins. When your start making that responsive all hell tends to break loose. They also use images just way too much, to the point that if a client doesn't upload images that look a certain way things look.

My boss comes from a front end dev history however he's the boss. Whenever he has to develop something if he doesn't like it or finds it to difficult it's his prerogative to change it or approach the client. I can't just do that.

On monday I'd like to sit down with my boss and explain to them that I need to have more of a role in creating the UI and design before I'm just handed 10 PSD files and told to make it work. I'm tired of having to bend over backwards to make something halfway work that looks great on a 1200px screen but horrible on a 1000px screen. What should I have prepared and how should I approach this?

Answer 1

Don't say 'I need to have more of a role'.

Tell him the benefits of involving you in design:

• Better understanding
• Input
• Shortened build time - but you need a reason other the bad designs

Answer 2

First, you need to discuss the problem with your boss and find out if he thinks it is a problem. You'd think it is a no-brainer to avoid making something more difficult, time consuming with a poorer product, but you'd be surprised.

Second, be prepared to offer more than one suggestion. Ideally, you could get involved in the design planning or your boss may give you some creative licensing and do what you think is best to make it work. Maybe during the design process, they just need to let clients know that when if finally gets in "web format" it won't be exactly the way they demonstrate it. Hopefully, they are prepared with a number of examples of things that need to be modified by the web designer for the benefit of the site.

Third, be prepared to continue with this flawed process. I know it is frustrating and makes your job more difficult. You may win the next battle.

Answer 3

The first thing you need to do is make your boss aware of the problem. He may not know that you're having a hard time. Then you have to be able to provide feedback without being the "No Guy".

After you are sure that your boss knows there is an actual problem, you need to start talking about the waterfall method and the agile method.

Currently, you're using the waterfall method. a project passes through a series of gates, getting approved at each one before moving onto the next person.

This is causing problems, because as the next peasa... uhh... person, you are being set up to deliver a substandard product.

In the agile method, the two people send the project back and forth, making small changes, getting approval and feedback (in both directions) then making another round of changes until they arrive on something they both think is good.

Done right, you get a much better product using the agile method.

tldr: make sure your boss knows there is a problem, then start throwing out 'agile' and 'waterfall' in emails.